Key Points

In A v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police and another, the House of Lords holds:

Applying the proper
interpretation of the Equal Treatment Directive as expressed by the European
Court of Justice in P v S [1996] IRLR 347 and KB v National Health
Service Pension Agency and another [2004] IRLR 240, search duties under s.54
of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 ("PACE") must be interpreted as
applying to a transsexual in his or her reassigned gender, meaning that a
post-operative male-to-female transsexual could lawfully carry out s.54
searches of women, as a woman.

This being the case, it could
not be said that it was a genuine occupational qualification (under s.7 of
the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) for becoming a police officer that one's
legal and apparent gender must be the same,
and that such a qualification could not be met by a post-operative male-to-female transsexual.

Accordingly, to refuse to
employ a post-operative male-to-female transsexual as a police officer on the
basis that there was such a genuine occupational qualification was an act of
unlawful discrimination, and the chief constable's appeal against this
finding would be dismissed.

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